(Optimally, I would add a traditional set of LEDs powered from the Arduino, but that's a question for another day)

My question is this:Having two separate power supplies, how is this wired? In essence will I have two separate breadboards? One for each power amount? And then do I bring both of the ground lines together and take that back to the Arduino?

I am simply afraid of frying everything. Let me know if my thoughts are correct. If you can, a schematic would be incredibly helpful.

Thank you so much.

I love this process. I look forward to growing in this field and maybe even one day answering questions for people like myself.

Hey that black wire is from the LED strip. I was assuming that is the 12V on the strip.

Also, it is connected to the Vin, and Arduino is powered by USB. I then tried connecting a 9V battery to the arduino to see if that would do anything, but nothing. The LEDS on the Arduino are on, but the strip is not coming on.

The 5v regulator on the Arduino is only good for a few hundred mA, and is easily overloaded by a a lot of LEDs.VIN is connected directly to the DC input jack on the Arduino, so the available power depends on what you are using to power the Arduino. (The Arduino itself only needs about 20mA, so anything else is available for LEDs.)

// Choose which 2 pins you will use for output.// Can be any valid output pins.int dataPin = 11; // 'yellow' wireint clockPin = 13; // 'green' wire// Don't forget to connect 'blue' to ground and 'red' to +5V

// Timer 1 is also used by the strip to send pixel clocks

// Set the first variable to the NUMBER of pixels. 20 = 20 pixels in a rowLPD6803 strip = LPD6803(20, dataPin, clockPin);

void setup() {

// The Arduino needs to clock out the data to the pixels // this happens in interrupt timer 1, we can change how often // to call the interrupt. setting CPUmax to 100 will take nearly all all the // time to do the pixel updates and a nicer/faster display, // especially with strands of over 100 dots. // (Note that the max is 'pessimistic', its probably 10% or 20% less in reality)

strip.setCPUmax(50); // start with 50% CPU usage. up this if the strand flickers or is slow

// Start up the LED counter strip.begin();

// Update the strip, to start they are all 'off' strip.show();}

void loop() { // Some example procedures showing how to display to the pixels

for (j=0; j < 96 * 5; j++) { // 5 cycles of all 96 colors in the wheel for (i=0; i < strip.numPixels(); i++) { // tricky math! we use each pixel as a fraction of the full 96-color wheel // (thats the i / strip.numPixels() part) // Then add in j which makes the colors go around per pixel // the % 96 is to make the wheel cycle around strip.setPixelColor(i, Wheel( ((i * 96 / strip.numPixels()) + j) % 96) ); } strip.show(); // write all the pixels out delay(wait); }}

// fill the dots one after the other with said color// good for testing purposesvoid colorWipe(uint16_t c, uint8_t wait) { int i;

/Users/davnirvana/Documents/Arduino/libraries/LPD6803/LPD6803.cpp: In member function 'void LPD6803::begin()':/Users/davnirvana/Documents/Arduino/libraries/LPD6803/LPD6803.cpp:140: error: 'Timer1' was not declared in this scope/Users/davnirvana/Documents/Arduino/libraries/LPD6803/LPD6803.cpp: In member function 'void LPD6803::setCPUmax(uint8_t)':/Users/davnirvana/Documents/Arduino/libraries/LPD6803/LPD6803.cpp:156: error: 'Timer1' was not declared in this scope